Woman Warns Against Popping Pimples After her Pimple Became Terribly Infected

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A few months ago, Katie Wright started feeling pain near her eyebrow and noticed a blemish.

At first, she tried not to pick at it but after a few days, it looked bigger and uglier. The zit never formed a head or started shrinking so she decided to help it so when she got out of the shower, she tried popping it, hoping it would go away.

However, instead, it got worse.

“My head just got hotter and hotter and started swelling up. It was unimaginable pain. I thought maybe I irritated my skin too much or pushed too hard,” Wright, 21, told TODAY.

As the pain got worse she put an ice pack on it, took some ibuprofen, and tried resting. The next morning she woke up to a frightening sight – her face was so swollen that her features actually looked distorted. The blemish was also oozing.

“I could barely open my eyes,” she said. “The difference in my face it was unreal.”

Wright then went to the ER at St. David’s Medical Center in Austin, where doctors looked at the swollen ooze blemish and knew exactly it was —cellulitis.

“I was unaware of how serious it was,” she said.

Cellulitis is a skin infection which is caused by bacteria, such as streptococcus or staphylococcus.

People carry this bacteria on their skin and it only becomes dangerous as it enters an opening in the skin, such as a popped pimple, cut, or bug bite.

The infection spreads quickly and if it spreads to the eyes or the brain it can cause loss of vision or brain damage.

“I didn’t know that cellulitis could spread to your brain or eyes,” Wright said.

A Dermatologist, Dr. Adam Friedman, who didn’t treat Wright, said to TODAY that he commonly sees patients with infections from skin picking, popping pimples, scratching bug bites, and using dirty makeup brushes.

“It is very easy to get an infection,” he said. “We have over 500 species of bacteria of the skin. When you break the skin, you are putting all the bacteria in the skin.”

Friedman says people should make sure to clean their makeup brushes, toss expired makeup, and to not pop pimples their pimples.

Despite the warning, people will pop pimples anyway.

“Hands down, you will certainly get scars if you pick at your acne,” Freidman said. “If you are going to do it, do it with clean with hands. You are creating a wound.”

Wright suspects she contracted staph through a hair follicle in her eyebrow. She believes that a dirty eyebrow spoolie, the brush attached to her eyebrow pencil, contained the bacteria.

“Where I made my mistake … I separate my brushes from my product to wash them. I threw my eyebrow pencil with my products instead taking the spoolie with it to clean,” she said.

Doctors treated Wright IV with antibiotics and she had to stay in the hospital overnight, however, the swelling didn’t subside and the infection throbbed with pain.

She had to return to the ER where they gave her stronger IV antibiotics and kept her for three days.

While Wright had an allergic reaction to the drugs, she also improved. In a week the swelling subsided. Three weeks after, the lesion and scabbing finally diminished.

“I never thought I could get staph on my face,” she said. “You don’t do your eyebrows and think ‘Hey this might make me go blind and give me brain damage.’”

Wright shared her photos on social media which has gone viral. While the nickname she earned, “staph girl,” isn’t so flattering, she hopes that her story will help others.

“I would advise people to wash your brushes,” she said. “If it can happen to me it can happen to anyone.”